NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: WILLIAMSBURG

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: WILLIAMSBURG; Hip Young Things See No Need For a New Guide to the Hip

By TARA BAHRAMPOUR

Published: April 6, 2003

In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, arguably one of the hippest neighborhoods in America, the tassels and cronkites don't know if they're deck or fin. They don't even know what those terms mean.

You'd think they would. Spoonbill and Sugartown, a bookstore on Bedford Avenue in the heart of hipness, has in the last month sold 40 copies of ''The Hipster Handbook'' (Anchor), a new guidebook that defines those terms as mainstays of hipster parlance. Although the book purports to be about hip young things everywhere, its author, Robert Lanham, runs a cultural Web site called FreeWilliamsburg, and few who live in this neighborhood doubt that its inhabitants played an important role in his research.

Brian McCarthy, an employee of the bookstore, said the books ''have been met with a mixture of fascination and disgust.''

''I've had comments ranging from 'This book is so evil' to 'It might be kind of nauseating, but it has a lot of good information in it,''' he said. ''I think a lot of people pick it up as kind of a guilty pleasure.''

Miles Bellamy, the store's owner, is on the disgust side.

''I wish the book didn't exist,'' he said. ''The store's official position is that we hate the book.''

Shown a copy of it, Mikey Weiss, who owns a nearby computer supply store called Mikey's Hook-Up, laughed and uttered an expletive. ''I thought it was just a myth,'' he said.

Mr. Weiss, 28, who has a maroon mohawk and plays his electric bass behind the counter, had seen a version of the book's ''Are You a Hipster?'' quiz on the site, at freewilliamsburg.com, and has doubts about its reliability.

''I won't reveal any names, but I had two of probably the most hippest of the hipsters take the quiz, and they both failed miserably,'' he said. ''What I think is, if you even take the test, you're a failed hipster.''

In a nearby cafe, Kelly Hayes, a 27-year-old dancer, predicted that a list of ''11 Clues You Are a Hipster'' would not apply to her. But reminded that Clue No. 6 read, ''You spend much of your leisure time in bars and restaurants with monosyllabic names like Plant, Bound, and Shine,'' and given the fact that she was sitting in a cafe called Verb, she admitted that she might, in fact, be a little hip.

While no one among a sample of Williamsburgers was familiar with the book's lingo, most agreed that its drawings of hip hairstyles were recognizable depictions of what adorned the heads of local residents.

''This is about every fourth person you see,'' said Mr. Weiss, pointing at the Casablanca, a tousled look reminiscent of Mick Jagger circa 1973. Several identified the Neo Panther, a large Afro shown with horn-rimmed glasses, as belonging to a musician who works at Verb.

In the opinion of Mr. McCarthy, most buyers of the book seem new to the city. ''It doesn't seem to be bought by the people it's supposed to be about,'' he said.

As for the term ''hipster,'' he added: ''Nobody uses the word. Asking somebody if they're a hipster is kind of like asking somebody if they're bourgeois, and of course they're like, 'No, no, I'm not bourgeois.'''

And as for the other terms? For those not hip enough to know: a tassel is a girl, a cronkite is a boy, deck is cool and fin is unhip. Another word for unhip? Midtown. TARA BAHRAMPOUR